The interesting thing is that the Bill has to allow for a range of situations.

But the outcome is more determined by what they want / can afford / fits within a reasonable balance of duties.

Thinking about it, the capacity duty is mostly about protecting capacity for specified services that don't have enough benefits.

Freight shouldn't need that protection; there will generally be a business case to fix the problem somehow. But enhancements are always going to be discretionary.

Plays out differently for freight, because the public benefits are large, and there's the duty to promote. So it'll be about covering marginal costs, and compromises to make things fit.

Catch it in the morning sun and you'll see a very non-communist cross on it...

I am reliably informed that their pasta is better than their gelato :(

But maybe that's in comparison to Jack's

I just realised it has the same initials as Magic Money Tree

Network Rail have 'Capital Delivery' which does quite a bit of in house design, but construction is put out.

First Lumo doesn't turn up to midday; that was a red herring.

The sensitivity over the firebreak paths is more about other OA bids.

You need the comma when the third part is longer. This is quite good style (short / short / long), but also the inevitable consequence of academics who really really want to make their sentences as long as they possibly can.

A bit more plausible than trying to use public spending cuts to crowd in private investment.

The accuracy of mode and trip-stages isn't great. Unfortunately.

Open access services were declined to protect the hourly (offpeak) firebreak slot, so ORR decided to be fair they had to protect the peak firebreak slot as well.

It's normal for a railway to accept performance risk in the peak to run extra services but that's clearly too subtle for ORR.

Not at all clear what strategic aims this SOBC is seeking to address.

Blackburn/Burnley were still holding out in the 2011 census as a separate high skill TTWA

The French typically have a gap midmorning for line inspection. We used to get a lot of delays on West Coast mid-morning for the same reason but we've developed ways to inspect with less disruption (eg better equipment on the track monitoring train).

Walk mostly. Edge of city centre is ideal for that (unlike edge of city).

Biggest surface emission problem is HGVs. Rail is about 3% of CO2e.

They tried to promote development in Croydon back in the day: didn't really come to much. City centre plus commuting works better.

We're stuck with most of the lowish-density housing. But new building can be different.